Will Smith admits After Earth was 'excruciating'

Will Smith feels guilty about getting his son Jaden "involved in After Earth".

The 46-year-old actor starred alongside his son in the 2013 sci-fi film and has revealed the movie's negative reaction was more difficult to accept than the response to the action-comedy movie 'Wild Wild West'.

He explained: "Wild Wild West was less painful than 'After Earth' because my son was involved in After Earth and I led him into it. That was excruciating. What I learned from that failure is how you win.

"I got reinvigorated after the failure of After Earth. I stopped working for a year and a half. I had to dive into why it was so important for me to have number-one movies. And I never would have looked at myself in that way."

However, Will says the failure of 'After Earth' taught him a valuable life lesson.

He told Esquire magazine: "I was a guy who, when I was fifteen my girlfriend cheated on me, and I decided that if I was number one, no woman would ever cheat on me.

"All I have to do is make sure that no one's ever better than me and I'll have the love that my heart yearns for.

"And I never released that and moved into a mature way of looking at the world and my artistry and love until the failure of After Earth, when I had to accept that it's not a good source of creation."